Jim,Rosemary, Sandy wrote:I don't use Facebook, but I thought there was a list of things that they advise you not disclose on facebook to prevent identity theft as well as various forms of stalking, pedophiles, and other weird people.

My son's same credit card has been compromised three times in the last year. Chase keeps giving him new accounts, but hackers keep finding him. Chase Bank just says hackers are smarter than they used to be and are harder to defeat as time goes on.

Means yer son need's to wipe and redo his laptop or PC, odds are he has a key logger on it.

Out of curiosity, I googled my name.
9,110,000 hits!
In the first ten pages, there were two correct listings.
If I get on 10 meters, and call CQ/DX, everybody in the world with a scanner can get my call sign, look it up, and find out who I am and where I am.
I am in the local phone book.
My call sign is on my license plate.
Security is an illusion. There are a lot of people making money off of the paranoia of the general public, by offering perfectly legal "security" services and gadgets that really don't do much good, except make profit for the suppliers. People all around me have huge yard lights to scare the crooks away. I don't. Why should I light up the area for them? Let them trip over my junk as they trespass, serves them right!
Maybe one of the vicious guard bunnies will run up and bite them on the leg.
or maybe that big ol' fat raccoon that comes by and cleans up the cat food almost every night.

korbe wrote:"I'm leaving for a long trip this coming Tuesday. How do you folks keep your home safe while no one is there to keep an eye on it?"

Exactly!!

Put your name out there.. post a few thousand posts where people can start to piece stuff together then add your name, a phone book and guess what.. might as well put up a flashing sign that says no one home on your front lawn.. I like others don't worry about it but I try to have "Net Smarts" which is a term I just came up with as a spin off of "Street Smarts"..

There is plenty of info about folks online and elsewhere, which makes folks easier targets....

Ditto, from another retired special agent. Have searched for myself online often enough to be concerned enough about just the open records available, that I'm not going to add to what's already out there.

Someone wants to contact me, there are lots of ways to do it without me adding to the mix.

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." -- Mahatma Gandhi